States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance write by Adam Day. This book was released on 2022. States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Today's vision of world order is founded upon the concept of strong, well-functioning states, in contrast to the destabilizing potential of failed or fragile states. This worldview has dominated international interventions over the past 30 years as enormous resources have been devoted to developing and extending the governance capacity of weak or failing states, hoping to transform them into reliable nodes in the global order. But with very few exceptions, this project has not delivered on its promise: countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remain mired in conflict despite decades of international interventions. States of Disorder addresses the question, 'Why has UN state-building so consistently failed to meet its objectives?'. It proposes an explanation based on the application of complexity theory to UN interventions in South Sudan and DRC, where the UN has been tasked to implement massive stabilization and state-building missions. Far from being ''ungoverned spaces, these settings present complex, dynamical systems of governance with emergent properties that allow them to adapt and resist attempts to change them. UN interventions, based upon assumptions that gradual increases in institutional capacity will lead to improved governance, fail to reflect how change occurs in these systems and may in fact contribute to underlying patterns of exclusion and violence. Based on more than a decade of the author's work in peacekeeping, this book offers a systemic mapping of how governance systems work, and indeed work against, UN interventions. Pursuing a complexity-driven approach instead helps to avoid unintentional consequences, identifies meaningful points of leverage, and opens the possibility of transforming societies from within.
States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance
States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance write by Adam Day. This book was released on 2022-03-28. States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Today's vision of world order is founded upon the concept of strong, well-functioning states, in contrast to the destabilizing potential of failed or fragile states. This worldview has dominated international interventions over the past 30 years as enormous resources have been devoted to developing and extending the governance capacity of weak or failing states, hoping to transform them into reliable nodes in the global order. But with very few exceptions, this project has not delivered on its promise: countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remain mired in conflict despite decades of international interventions. States of Disorder addresses the question, 'Why has UN state-building so consistently failed to meet its objectives?'. It proposes an explanation based on the application of complexity theory to UN interventions in South Sudan and DRC, where the UN has been tasked to implement massive stabilization and state-building missions. Far from being ''ungoverned spaces," these settings present complex, dynamical systems of governance with emergent properties that allow them to adapt and resist attempts to change them. UN interventions, based upon assumptions that gradual increases in institutional capacity will lead to improved governance, fail to reflect how change occurs in these systems and may in fact contribute to underlying patterns of exclusion and violence. Based on more than a decade of the author's work in peacekeeping, this book offers a systemic mapping of how governance systems work, and indeed work against, UN interventions. Pursuing a complexity-driven approach instead helps to avoid unintentional consequences, identifies meaningful points of leverage, and opens the possibility of transforming societies from within.
States of Disorder
States of Disorder - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook States of Disorder write by Adam Day. This book was released on 2022. States of Disorder available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Why is the recent track record of state-building so poor? Over the past decade, international interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have not resulted in meaningful improvements in the capacities of those countries to govern effectively and peacefully. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that in many settings, state-building efforts may have contributed to conflict dynamics. This paper proposes an explanation based on complexity theory, employing an ecosystems lens to explain how systems of governance resist so-called external efforts to transform them into liberal models of the state. Instead of a gradual, linear progression towards improved state institutional capacity, governance systems in settings like South Sudan evolve, often shifting into more violent, predatory, and exclusive patterns of behaviour that undermine the United Nations' core objectives. These raise existential questions for peacebuilding as a practice, and for the United Nations as a protagonist in many of these settings.
The Forever Crisis
The Forever Crisis - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Forever Crisis write by Adam Day. This book was released on 2024-08-01. The Forever Crisis available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book is an introduction to complex systems thinking at the global governance level. It offers concepts, tools, and ways of thinking about how systems change that can be applied to the most wicked problems facing the world today. More than an abstract argument for complexity theory, the book offers a targeted critique of today’s highest-profile proposals for improving the governance of our environment, security, finance, health, and digital space. It suggests that we should spend less effort and resources on upgrading existing institutions, and more on understanding how they (and we) relate to each other. The volume will be essential reading for public policymakers, NGOs and think tanks, foreign policy experts, government officials, and global decision-makers.
The Political Economy of Civil War and UN Peace Operations
The Political Economy of Civil War and UN Peace Operations - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Political Economy of Civil War and UN Peace Operations write by Mats Berdal. This book was released on 2023-03-31. The Political Economy of Civil War and UN Peace Operations available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book examines the operational and political challenges facing UN peace operations deployed in countries where civil war and protracted violence have given rise to the complex and distinctive political economies of conflict. The volume explores the nature and impact of such political economies – informal systems of power and influence formed by the interaction of local, national, and region-wide war economies with the political agendas of conflict actors – on the course of UN peace operations. It focuses in detail on the UN’s long-running peace operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Somalia. The book is centrally concerned with the interaction of UN missions with the power structures and local conflict dynamics that shape individual mission settings, and the challenges these pose for mediation, protection of civilians, and other tasks. It also offers a critical assessment of the various ways in which the UN ‘system’, from its headquarters in New York to the field, has confronted the policy challenges posed by political economies of conflict-affected states, societies, and regions. It advances a pragmatic set of policy recommendations aimed at improving the UN’s ability to confront predatory and exploitative war economies. At the same time, the volume makes it clear that political and institutional obstacles to more effective UN action are certain to remain profound and are unlikely ever to be fully overcome let alone eradicated. Despite making some progress since the 1990s to better understand the political economy of civil wars, the UN has struggled with how to tackle informal networks of power and their consequences for efforts to end wars. The book will be of special interest to students of war and conflict studies, statebuilding, political economy of conflict, UN interventionism and peacebuilding, and IR/Security in general.
